


Burgeoning Hope

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (summary is crackier than fic tbh), Accidental Pregnancy, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, I was gonna make it more serious but really it just boils down to, she’s pregnant and he’s dumb and hasn’t left his job yet, this is a silly fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-13 07:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13565568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: When word gets out that Rey is pregnant, the Resistance is startled.  Had she really slept with Luke Skywalker during her mission to bring him back from his seclusion?  He’d been isolated for so long, but then again he had never seemed to have any interest in that particular pleasure of the flesh.  But who else could have fathered her child?(Spoiler alert: It wasn’t Luke Skywalker)(Spoiler alert #2: It was Kylo Ren)





	1. Rey (2 Months)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meritmut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/gifts).



> For [Nina](http://haraldskaer.tumblr.com), with whom I was joking around about this AU and then shit got real.
> 
> I'm hoping I'm depicting a close-enough-to-accurate pregnancy here. Apologies in advance for whatever I might mess up spectacularly. [@itslaurenmae](http://itslaurenmae.tumblr.com) helped me some but whatever I bork is on me.
> 
> Many thanks to [@politicalmamaduck](http://politicalmamaduck.tumblr.com) for betaing!
> 
> [@agalaxynotsofaraway](http://agalaxynotsofaraway.tumblr.com) made a _lovely_ [moodboard](http://agalaxynotsofaraway.tumblr.com/post/170828023280/moodboard-for-galacticprideandprejudices) for this fic which I encourage you all to check out <3

It’s two months after Crait when Leia Organa reaches for her hand and squeezes it with a knowing look that gives Rey chills. She leads Rey to her room and closes the door behind them. “I’m sensing a presence,” she says quietly to Rey. “The Force, growing stronger.”

Immediately, Rey’s mind leaps to Kylo Ren, to the visions that she has of him sometimes still. She has not spoken to him since the _Supremacy,_ but she has watched as his eyes grow angrier and angrier at the sight of her. _She’s his mother,_ Rey thinks, _she may sense his presence too when the Force connects us._

“I didn’t think that Luke would—well, he never seemed interested,” Leia says, setting the little kettle in the corner to boil, and Rey frowns, confused. “But the Force is so strong in her. That’s not surprising. Any child of yours would likely be—”

“ _What?_ ” Rey says sharply.

Leia glances over her shoulder at Rey. There it is again, that knowing look. “You’re pregnant, Rey. I can feel it. When did you last bleed?”

There had been blood between her legs the morning after she and Ben had…before he’d…after they’d…

But that hadn’t been the normal blood she’d had since she was thirteen on Jakku, sporadic but heavy.

She swallows.

“Not for a while,” she whispers, then adds urgently, “But it’s never been consistent.” She remembers an old woman at Niima Outpost telling her she was too skinny and hungry and that would cause the irregularity. Rey hadn’t cared then. She hadn’t thought to care now.

“And you didn’t have the implant put in when we were on D’Qar?” Leia asks.

Rey shakes her head. “There was no time before I went…” to Luke. Of course. Of course that would be what Leia would think, what they all would think. No one knew about the _Supremacy_ , the way that Ben—that Kylo—had looked at her after he’d killed the last guard, the way their lips had crashed together and how she had had no idea what she was doing, only that the heat between them was fated, surely.

“Luke,” Rey begins not sure what to say, because if Luke is a lie, she doesn’t know how to tell Leia—Ben’s _mother_ —the truth of it, but Leia raises a hand.

“Would love the child,” Leia says simply. “There was so much love in his heart. You must have seen that.”

Rey remembers a bitter old man, and bites her lip, even as Leia leans over and takes her hand. “You’re so young. Younger than I was when I had Ben.”

Rey closes her eyes, and tries not to think about Ben, but it’s like a dam has been broken and the memory of his lips against hers, the feeling of him, thick and hard inside her, thrusting into her again and again, as she’d run her hands through his hair, had traced her tongue over the curve of his ear.

Suddenly she feels that boiling nausea that’s been plaguing her lately and which she had assumed had just come from all the rich food on Naboo where they are hiding from the First Order, her scavenger’s stomach unprepared for the thick, creamy stews that the Naberries had prepared for their wayward cousin Leia Organa.

“And I know that it will be hard—especially with Luke gone, and—”

“Leia,” Rey interrupts, her heart in her throat. The only thing that she can imagine that would make this situation worse would be lying to Leia Organa. “Leia, it’s not Luke’s child.”

Leia freezes. She seems to deflate before Rey’s eyes, but gives her a sad smile. “No. No of course not. It was silly of me to assume. I should have known that Luke wouldn’t. Someone else, then. Finn, maybe?”

“No,” Rey says, the truth bubbling up out of her throat. “Not Finn. It was—it was Ben.”

“Ben,” Leia says blankly, clearly unable to process Rey’s words.

There are tears in Rey’s eyes now as she nods and she tells Leia everything—of going to the _Supremacy_ , of Ben killing Snoke to save her, of what they had done among the corpses of Snoke’s Praetorian guards, and how Ben had asked her to join him—and how she’d refused. Leia listens without a word, her gaze unreadable as Rey’s chest starts heaving and the tears start falling more and more thickly. Telling his mother what she had done, what she had tried to do, what she had thought she could love in him brings the crashing failure of it all back to her. Leia gets up and a moment later she feels the older woman’s arms wrap around her as she sobs her heartbreak into her neck.

“Shhh, shhh,” Leia tells her, stroking her hair gently.

Rey’s never been held like this, as if by a mother.

_They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money._

He hadn’t lied to her, at least. She had known the truth of it before he had, had locked it away and—

“You continue to prove to me that you are so brave,” Leia whispers to her as Rey cries. “So very brave, Rey. Do you understand me?”

Rey nods.

“You tried to bring my son home.” There’s a tremor to Leia’s voice. “You tried. And after what you’ve told me…maybe I was wrong to give up hope that there’s light in him.”

“He would have let everyone die,” Rey interjects wetly.

“Yes. But love is of the light, not the dark,” Leia insists. “And if he could love you,” she sighs. “Well, it’s not useful to dwell on dreams. Not when we’re in the middle of a war.” She shakes herself and looks down at Rey. “No one can know the truth. That it’s Ben’s child. Let them think it’s no one in particular, or that it’s Luke’s—that might give them a spark of hope. But Ben’s…I can’t think of anything more dangerous for her—or for you.”

Rey swallows. She hates the idea of lying. She hates it—it’s why she had told Leia the truth. She can’t fathom looking Finn in the face and lying, after everything he’s done for her. _I can’t think of anything more dangerous for her—or for you._

She nods.

She looks up at Leia again and Leia kisses her forehead and hugs her and strokes her hair again. “My brave girl,” Leia whispers. “Is it strange that I can’t wait to meet her?”

“How do you know it’s a girl?” Rey asks. She hadn’t even known she was pregnant, but somehow she doesn’t doubt that Leia’s right.

“I just know,” Leia responds. “I never thought I’d have a grandchild. I never thought I’d have family again.” Her voice cracks and a lump grows in Rey’s throat.

“Me neither,” she says shakily.

Leia presses a kiss to her forehead. And Rey is frightened of everything, but somehow, miraculously, she doesn’t feel alone.

* * *

Rey is, indeed, pregnant—two months along with a small human growing in her—barely an inch long. Now that she knows that the child is there, Rey marvels that she hadn’t noticed sooner because the moment she sees the projection of her on the screen, she can feel the Force signature swirling in her womb. She’d thought it was nausea, or perhaps the dark dreams she’d had ever since Ben had forcibly ripped open the memories of her parents, the nightmares that had haunted her during empty months and days on Jakku, alone apart from Unkar Plutt. Flowing light and dark balancing in her.

The medic gives her firm instructions of what she is and is not allowed to eat, and that she has to stop drinking caf immediately, and that anything alcoholic is no longer allowed. Rey had never drank much anyway—she’d never been able to afford it (or maybe, a traitor voice whispers in the back of her head that sounds eerily like Kylo, she had strong negative associations with alcohol from her early youth)—so that was hardly a sacrifice.

When the medic strolls away, Rey turns to Leia. “I feel her,” she whispers. “The light in her—and the dark.” She swallows.

Leia squeezes her hand. “Her light is so bright. It is more than a match for the dark.”

“And Ben?” Rey asks her.

Leia looks down for a moment, and Rey knows it’s to hide the sadness in her eyes. If there’s one thing that General Organa hates, it’s letting people see any fragility in the purposeful hopefulness of her demeanor. Especially now. Especially when they are so close to losing everything.

“The darkness came from outside Ben,” she says. “I felt it—I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it wasn’t my son. Even in the womb, something—Snoke—was watching him grow.” She gives Rey a sad smile. “I thought I could protect him—thought Luke could help him grow strong enough to fight it on his own, but…” she didn’t finish the thought aloud.

She didn’t need to.

_Maybe I was wrong to give up hope that there’s light in him._

How many years had Leia Organa hoped in her son—and hadn’t given up?

Instead, she asks Leia “Was I a coward to leave him like that?”

Leia shakes her head. “No. The Resistance would have died. You did what you had to do. And as much as I love my son, I worry that unless the change comes from within him, it wouldn’t last. He’s spent too much of his life being led down one path or another. He has to learn to walk the path on his own.”

* * *

Just as Leia had predicted, the assumption as word spreads of Rey’s condition is that Luke fathered her child. Some look at her strangely, that this girl who wasn’t even twenty yet would bed down with a man so much older than her. Others look at her with a fierce protectiveness, remembering Luke’s sacrifice for them, his defeat of Kylo Ren. Those gazes make her all the more convinced that Leia is right: that no one can know the truth of her child’s paternity.

But not everyone takes that rumor for the truth.

 _Did he rape you?_ Chewie asks her throatily when she finds him in the cockpit of the Falcon.

Of course Chewie would know. Chewie had been with her the whole time, would know that it wasn’t Luke who had gotten her pregnant, would guess from the way she had thrown herself into the void for Ben.

“No,” she says softly. “No, he didn’t.”

Chewie reaches over and pats her head as she sits down next to him. _I had to ask,_ Chewie rumbles carefully. She remembers her own screams of horror when Kylo had ignited his saber into his own father, Chewie’s agonized roars as he fired the bowcaster.

“You must have known him as a boy,” she says softly.

Chewie makes a noise of ascent. _I don’t like to think about what he was. It makes what he is that much more heartbreaking._

Rey understands that all too well. And Chewie had never dabbled in _what he could be_ s.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she tells him.

 _I won’t,_ Chewie promises her at once. _Does anyone else know?_

“Leia,” Rey says. “I couldn’t lie to her. I couldn’t.”

 _I thought as much,_ Chewie responds. He sounds relieved, actually. _She’s seemed to have a spring in her step. It reminded me of when she was pregnant with him._

Rey closes her eyes. Leia had been several years older than Rey was now, and Han had been as much older than Leia as Ben is than Rey. She tries to imagine them both young, but can’t.

She rubs a hand over her belly. _How old were my parents when they had me? How old were they when they left me?_

_She should have a whole family—a father, and all her grandparents._

But if it was just Rey and Leia—well, Rey would make sure her daughter knew nothing— _nothing_ —but love.

* * *

 Rey is nearly asleep when that numb feeling in her ears happens and the sound of whatever spaceship he’s on fades into her room. She sees him standing there, looking down—presumably at a desk or a table, but she can only see him, standing in the moonlight of her bedroom.

He does not look at her. He had stopped trying to get her to talk to him a month before, and now each of them usually just waits for the Force to break the connection again. She watches his face. It is so clear he is trying to ignore her, trying to focus on whatever he’s reading with the intensity of his gaze.

She opens her mouth, tries to say his name, but the word catches in her throat. She should tell him—she should. He’ll see at some point, surely.

Her ears go numb again and he fades from sight and Rey can’t help but feel relieved.

Relieved, and yet there’s a crushing weight on her chest.


	2. Kylo (3 Months)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, I'm blown away by your kind words. Thanks so much for reading <3

He is only half paying attention when he hears the phrase “Skywalker’s child” fall from Hux’s lips.

“What was that?” he barks, his attention fully on the general, feeling a wave of that nausea that had been plaguing him for the past few months, despite the medical unit repeatedly stating that there’s nothing wrong with him.  Hux’s lips half-twist—as much as he will allow himself to smile bitterly.

“It’s a rumor,” he says.  “Nothing more, I’m sure.  Some attempt on the part of the Resistance to gain support from those who have rightfully seen that their cause is lost.”

“What’s the rumor?” Kylo says, leaning forward.

Hux’s eye twitches in annoyance.  “That before he expired so tragically,” There it is, the snide reminder that Kylo had been outwitted once again by his conniving rat of an uncle, “he managed to impregnate a girl he was training.”  Kylo’s skin goes both hot and cold at the same time, but Hux hasn’t noticed and keeps talking.  “And that the Resistance is starting to put about that the Skywalker line will live on in his planted seed.”

The table is shaking and Hux rolls his eyes.  “Everyone out.  The Supreme Leader must collect himself.”

Kylo practically hurls Hux from the room after the fleeing advisors and his saber is in his hand before he realizes it, ignited and slicing through the heavy black metal of the table.  The scent of burning steel fills his nose, hot as the anger in him.

That Skywalker might have touched her—that she might have loved him—that she hadn’t stayed with him even when he’d begged—swirls around in his mind, a jealous green rage the color of his uncle’s lightsaber. 

_When we touched hands, I saw your future._

He’d seen her turning, but that had been a lie.  Had all of it been a lie, her tears as she’d begged him not to do this?  Had it been his uncle that had put those tears there, doing whatever he could to defeat Kylo, to save his soul from the darkness that his uncle had cemented there when he tried to kill him?  His words in her mouth?

Kylo slashes at the table again, then kicks at it and storms from the room, going he doesn’t know where. 

He’d thought he’d wanted to be Supreme Leader, but what he really wants right now is to fly out in his Silencer, go as fast and far as he can until he’s outrun the trembling rage that even the mention of his uncle’s name can still fill him with.  _And I’ll always be with you, just like your father._

He’d killed Snoke for her.

How it had plagued him to connect to her and then for her to cut herself off from him like that.  He’d thought she’d loved him too, the way she’d kissed him, the way she’d held his face, the ways she’d opened herself up to him—warm and hot and calling him by whatever name she wanted because she alone seemed to see him, seemed to hear him.

As though the Force had heard him, his ears go numb and he stops in front of his chambers, opening the door to them slowly, taking deep breaths to calm himself. 

He could scream at Rey, he could accuse her of any sort of mal-intent—but if he screamed at her like a heartbroken child…

He sees her sitting there, cross-legged on the floor, polishing something that he can’t see.  She doesn’t look pregnant, but it’s been three months since their coupling—she wouldn’t be big yet anyway.

“What’s that?” he asks her, and she looks up.

He half expects her to turn away from him coldly, but she doesn’t. 

“My lightsaber,” she says quietly.

“My grandfather’s—”

“No, mine.  It broke, remember?  So I remade it.”

He frowns.  He can’t see it.  “How long is it?”  She seems to be polishing something with a very large grip.

“It’s a staff,” she replies shortly.  “I’ve always been better with one.”

He’d seen her fight with a sabersword—but not with a staff. 

“There’s a rumor about you,” he said and her eyes jerk up to him.  “That I just heard.”  He settles down in a chair and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.  His face is inches from hers, and she doesn’t look away. 

“Oh?” she asks him.  “And what did you hear?”

“That you’re carrying my uncle’s child.”

Rey doesn’t look away from him, but her face hardens.  “And how did you hear that?”

“Is it the truth?”

“You answer mine and I’ll answer yours.”

A fair enough trade, he supposes.  His whole body is trembling as he leans forward and begins to speak.  “I heard it in my reports earlier today.  Hux thinks it’s just rumors, falsehoods the Resistance is spreading to try to spark some sort of hope in the galaxy.  That their perfect savior Skywalker left an heir on his deathbed.  Is it the truth?”

“No,” Rey says.  “It’s not.”  He practically sags with relief.  He’d forgotten how honest she was—all the months of Hux and his army men trying to take what they could get out of him, always with their double meanings and their lies. Rey is like the sun after months of freezing rain. 

Her gaze grows determined as she looks at him.  “She’s yours.”

And Rey’s gone—completely and totally gone and the room is dark again and Kylo—Kylo can’t breathe.

* * *

 

He has tried, in the past, to understand how their connection through the Force works.  It has never proven successful.  He has decided—or perhaps needs to believe—that Snoke was a liar, and that it hadn’t been he who forged their bond.  Snoke lied to him about many things in his life, why would he not also lie about this?  And how could he have done it?  Snoke was strong, but strong enough for this?  Kylo doubted it.

He has never been able to determine how the connection works—only recognizing it for that briefest moment of sound and air changing around him and then seeing her before him, as though she is truly there, part of his life, solid and tangible.

Ben spends most of the rest of the afternoon in his suite, looking out at the stars, his heart beating the last words that Rey had said to him. 

_She’s yours._

_She’s yours._

_She’s yours._

He had never imagined himself a father.  He didn’t know what a father should be.  All he’d ever had was Han Solo, running away from him across the stars and coming back unable to understand his nightmares, belittling the part of him that made him feel like maybe he was worth something because that’s all people ever talked about—how strong the Force was with him.  Han Solo had never cared about the Force, so how could he have cared about his son?

Ben Solo had been a weak, pathetic boy.

But it was Ben that she’d called him when she’d taken him inside her, when he’d thrust into her until they were both breathless—alive, so blissfully alive, and together for one perfect moment.

He tries to imagine a little girl with his dark hair and Rey’s warm eyes and for a moment he is breathless all over again, the way he had been when he’d come apart inside her.  The little girl laughs, and waves at him, and when he waves back she pulls him towards her with the powerful Force she had inherited from both of her parents.  She giggles when he lifts her into the air and tugs at his hair and his heart breaks in that moment because that was not the future he had seen when he had touched Rey’s hand.  No part of that future had included a daughter.

But, as it turns out, no part of that future existed at all, because she had left him.

He finds himself sitting crosslegged on the floor where Rey had been sitting when the Force had connected them most recently.  He closes his eyes and settles his hands on his knees.  _Concentrate, Ben,_ he hears his uncle’s voice in his mind and anger flashes across his mind.  _That’s it—feel your anger, use it,_ Snoke’s voice this time and his blood runs cold. 

“Ben?”

He opens his eyes and there she is before him.  He hadn’t heard the connection—not while his mind had been roiling with Luke and Snoke.  This time, she is sitting in a chair, her hands resting on her knees.

He drinks her in now.  She seems fuller, perhaps.  Her breasts are bigger than he remembers them being—or perhaps he is imagining that.  But he still can see no sign of a swell in her stomach, but she’s wearing a loose fitting shirt. 

“Who knows?  Have you told anyone?” he asks her.

“Your mother knows the truth,” Rey responds, and he can’t bring himself to picture Leia Organa’s face.  Had she been disgusted?  Had she been thrilled?  Or something else entirely?  “And Chewie guessed.  No one else knows.  That she’s yours, I mean.  They know that I’m pregnant.”

“So they think it’s Luke’s,” Kylo says.  An easy assumption to make—people knew where Rey had gone.  A logical leap.  And yet he hates every single one of them for it, that they would name his uncle the father of his child and celebrate it, believing that his daughter would be the destruction of all he stands for.  He hates her for letting them think that, for letting them spread it across the galaxy so that Hux’s pinched, pointed face can be the one to tell him that Skywalker’s seed lives on.

“They can’t know she’s yours.  It would be too dangerous,” Rey says matter-of-factly. 

Kylo pauses.  He hadn’t thought of that.  “I’d kill anyone who’d hurt you for it,” he says.

“You’d kill all of them anyway.  I’d prefer to have as many of my friends live and not turn on me as possible.”

“They aren’t really your friends if they turn on you.”  The irony of saying this to her is not lost on him. 

She heaves a heavy sigh.  “Were we at peace, I’d agree with you.  But that doesn’t feel the sort of statement that can be made in war when you’re carrying the Supreme Leader of the First Order’s child _._   It’s treason, Ben.”

She keeps calling him that.  Does she still think there’s some hope in him?  Some light?  After everything?  How can she be so foolish?  How can she be so naïve?  How can she cling so determinedly to a past that has died?  Will she never learn to let go?

Or had she already let go of him, and now she simply does not care?

“And I suppose it’s fruitless to try and convince you to come join me—to live out the rest of your days in comfort and power, with our child at our side?”  Rey gives him a look.  “The offer still stands,” he adds hastily.  “I wasn’t sure if the situation had changed anything.”

“It’s changed nothing,” Rey responds firmly.

Kylo refuses to let on how her words deflate him.  He closes his eyes and starts when he feels something on his face—her hand.  She’s touching his face, and her eyes are so intent and he finds he can’t look away from her.

“As does my offer,” she tells him.  “It always will, if you choose it.”

She’s so close to him, and he remembers the taste of her lips, of her sweat, the feeling of his heart exploding as he’d lost himself inside her.  She’s so close to him and he can feel her breath on his face. 

“Consider it,” she whispers. Then she’s gone.


	3. Rey (4 Months)

Rey’s saberstaff swirls in her hand and she deflects the blasts with ease. Behind her, she hears Poe shouting orders, hears blasts that are passing towards the Stormtroopers before her. _Come on, Finn,_ she thinks. _Come on, you can do this._

It’s a daring move, sending him in like this, but he’d been the one to suggest it, to volunteer. No one knows the First Order’s structure better than Finn, and no one knows the heart of a Stormtrooper better than Finn. If anyone is going to be able to turn them away from the First Order, to claim the hearts and souls of the people within, surely it’s Finn.

“How much more time do we give him?” someone calls to Poe as Rey continues to deflect the blasts. She has yet to grow weary and the Force is pulsing around her—dark and light, her daughter flowing into her, keeping her strong.

The medics had hinted that maybe she should stay out of combat—that she would grow weary and that that could be dangerous for her, and for the child, but Rey was loathe to do so. “What’s the point of hiding when I can help us win? I’m not incapacitated just yet,” she’d demanded of Leia.

Leia had heaved a heavy sigh. “We want you safe—want her safe,” she’d said gently.

“And I’ll be careful. What would you have done when you were pregnant with Ben?”

“The situations are different.”

“So what would you do in my place?”

The General had acquiesced, but Rey could still sense her reaching out, checking on Rey, feeling the strength of Rey as she fought on. Deflecting blasts was easy, and none of the troopers seemed to want to get too close to her.

Her ears go numb briefly and of course this would happen right now. It’s been happening daily—it has ever since it first began—but this is the first time that—

“What are you doing?” His voice is hard.

“You’re blocking my view,” Rey snaps at him. “Can you move a little bit?” A blast shoots through him and he convulses as he had when she’d tried to shoot him on Ahch-To. “Get down. They’re aiming higher and won’t hit you if you stand.”

“Are you fighting _?_ ” he demands.

“Of course I am,” she retorts. “Will you sit down so I can see better?”

He does, but there’s a look of fury on his face. “You’re going to get yourself hurt—get her killed.”

“As if I don’t already consider the First Order the greatest threat to her life,” she responds. “And don’t condescend. You and I both know they won’t get near enough to hurt me and not one of their blasts will hit me.”

“Rey—”

“Kylo.”

“And my mother just let you do this?”

“Do you think I’d be out here if the General didn’t agree?”

“Yes.”

She has to give him that. She would be out here somehow. Behind her, she hears Poe shout, “What? I couldn’t hear you!”

“It’s nothing!” Rey calls back. “Just keeping myself going.”

“Are you getting tired?” Poe calls, and she can hear worry in his voice.

“I’m fine!” she rolls her eyes at Kylo. Then, more quietly, “Everyone acting like I’m some fragile flower just because I’m pregnant. Clearly none of them have ever had to scavenge having only eaten an eighth portion in three days. _That_ will make you shaky.” She is cheerful about it, watching as Kylo’s eyes widen as he tries to comprehend her words. It makes her smirk. “Just because you want to forget your past doesn’t mean that I want to shed mine, remember? I’m proud of all I’ve endured and what it made me. Not least because it means—” she blocks the fastest volley of fires she’s seen yet with a casual spin of her staff, “—that when everyone is worrying about the life growing within me, I can remind them that I’ve managed pretty well without being coddled.”

“It’s not coddling—it’s making sure that she—”

“So her life is more valuable than mine?” Rey challenges.

“That’s not what I’m saying—I’m saying that you—”

“I make my own decisions,” she interrupts him. “And have since I was six. That includes being able to decide if I fight to protect my daughter’s life or hide away. And if you’re too frightened of what that means for her, you can have your men withdraw. There’s more than one way to protect her life.”

A blast passes through Kylo and he convulses and Rey deflects it back over his shoulder with a flick of her saber.  

He gives her a glare. “Some are more immediate than others,” he snarls.

“What life do you want for her?” she retorts. “If she weren’t your child, what would you want for her?”

“The whole point of all this is to create a society where—”

“Children are ripped from their mothers like Finn?”

“Where the failures of the old orders become things of the past.”

“And the past lives on and sustains the future. That’s the balance of the Force, Kylo.”

And just like that he’s gone and Rey can’t help but feel relieved as she turns her attention back to continued onslaught. Or she would if they were still firing at her. She frowns, and holds her saber in front of her.

The Stormtroopers are retreating.

He couldn’t have ordered that, though—not from so far away. He doesn’t even know where she is, though it probably wouldn’t take him long to work out.

A moment later the Stormtroopers have turned around and are standing at attention and Finn emerges from within the base, a look of triumph blazing in his eyes as, slowly, the men begin to remove their helmets.

Behind her, Poe let’s out a whoop of delight. “We are the spark! And look what’s burning!”

Rey’s heart swells.

* * *

 

The Stormtroopers are in awe of her—both because of her friendship with Finn and because—

“Skywalker,” she hears whispered among the men and women as she passes through them. She feels eyes on her stomach. It’s starting to peek a little further out than it has for most of her life. If she weren’t built for starvation, compact and muscular, she might not be showing just yet. But Rey’s painfully aware of how her stomach is starting to jut and how it seems to grab the eye of every new member of the Resistance who insists on shaking her hand with wonder in her eyes.

 _I need someone to show me my place in all this,_ she told Luke on Ahch-To. She thinks of her growing girl, and swallows. _You’re nothing, you’re nobody—but not to me._

She hates that they look at her that way because of her daughter and not because of the three hours she’d spent sending their blasts spinning towards the skies. They love her girl for Luke, not for her—and that love is misplaced as is. _How they’d hate her if they knew she was Kylo’s. How they’d hate me._ The Resistance couldn’t sustain that hate.

“They’ll get over it,” Finn tells her later, rubbing her back. “They’re used to looking to authority figures for direction, and Luke Skywalker is an authority. They’ll see you for you soon enough.”

Rey shakes her head. Is this what the whole galaxy will see? Every act of heroism she performs—even though Luke is dead and gone—attached to his name and not to her own? And she hadn’t even named him as the father. She could go and say it was just some hookup while she and Chewie were fueling up the Falcon—an itch to scratch that had put life in a womb never given more thought to than her stomach.

But she won’t do that. She can’t.

_We are the spark! And look what’s burning!_

_The Jedi are legends, and the galaxy needs a legend._

But does she have to be a legend while she’s still alive? And can’t she be a legend in her own name, and not some shadow of Luke’s?

* * *

 

“I don’t like you fighting,” he tells her again when he next appears. She is in bed and he is lying next to her, clearly in bed as well.

“Then don’t fight me,” she tells him. She means it to be fiery, the spunk that Snoke had commented on when she had told him that he underestimated Ben Solo. _I did too,_ she thinks sadly before pushing the thought from her mind. She means to sound defiant, uncontrollable—not some possession of his, either in body or in womb. But instead her words come out soft, imploring and when she looks at him, she sees that his face is remarkably defensive.

They don’t speak every time they see one another. Sometimes it’s just a quick glance, or him reaching out to her through the Force to see that she’s feeling well, to feel the life growing within her. The timing of it has grown more regular now as well, always towards the evening, almost like clockwork. He’s always looking at her when it begins, while she sometimes still has to look around to see where he is.

Today, though, he is later than usual, which is why she’s in bed when he appears. The simple fact that there is a _than usual_ gives her pause. How used to him she’s grown in the past four months—even before she knew she was pregnant. It twists her heart, knowing what he has chosen to be.

“Don’t fight _me_ ,” he replies, equally imploring. “Rey—”

She feels their daughter fluttering within her and shushes him.

She grabs his hand and brings it over her stomach. “Do you feel it?” she breathes, looking up at him.

His eyes are so very dark and his lips part slightly and she feels his Force spreading out into her womb—darker by far than either hers or Leia’s, but that doesn’t worry her. Especially when she closes her eyes and feels the way her daughter seems to float in the darkness, the light within her keeping her from drowning, keeping her balanced in Kylo’s dark.

His voice is thick when he speaks. “You realize that this is only going to make me more adamant that you be careful,” he says. “That you protect her, and yourself and stay out of combat. I feel her, Rey. I feel her.” There’s wonder in his voice. His hand runs over her stomach, and she closes her eyes at the touch of him. For a moment, she lets her mind pretend that he’d come with her, that he’d abandoned the First Order and joined the light again. How wonderful it would be to lie beside him in truth and not just in mystical hallucination while they grappled with one another and the undeniable truth of the blood they now share.

“I will protect her,” she says. “I have been, and I always will.” She remembers screaming _“come back”_ after a spaceship and her eyes prickle. “She’ll only ever know love, and safety, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight for the galaxy I want her to live in. That’s protecting her too.”

“You’re infuriating,” he mutters. “Absolutely infuriating.”

“So you’re allowed to fight for the galactic order you wish your daughter to live in and I’m not?”

“I’m not carrying her in my womb.”

“I’d think that would make the experience that much more pressing for me, wouldn’t you?” That catches him off guard, and Rey presses her advantage. “I live with her every day, I feel her fluttering inside me every day, growing in me, stronger and stronger—do you think that I’m not constantly thinking of how to keep her safe? Are you?”


	4. Kylo (5 Months)

“Well, there seems to be some truth to the rumors, it seems, Supreme Leader,” Mitaka says to the silent room.

The Resistance managed to take down yet another base of Stormtroopers.  What Stormtroopers didn’t defect to join FN-2187 died valiantly in the name of the First Order—and by the thousands.  But more had ended up ransacking the base for all it was worth and going into hiding.

“And what rumors are those?” Kylo seethes. 

“It seems that their Jedi is pregnant.”

“Not a very good Jedi, then,” Hux snorts. “Aren’t they supposed to forgo all attachment?”

Mitaka projects a holo into the air and there she is, Rey fiercely blocking blasts, swinging her saberstaff with the same intensity he’d once seen her wield his grandfather’s lightsaber.  And she is, undeniably, visibly, pregnant in the holo.

It was only a matter of time, Kylo thinks gloomily as he stared at the depiction of her.  Then he raises a hand and the holo fizzles.  He doesn’t want them looking at her.

There’s a silence that fills the room, and everyone’s waiting, watching him.  He frowns.  Their expressions do not make sense.  They seem expectant, as though he is going to fly off the handle again.

“Well?” Kylo demands. 

“Supreme Leader,” Mitaka says tentatively.  “If I might suggest…Morale is low.  Suffering defeats like these in the past few months since Crait, and then the knowledge that the girl is carrying Skywalker’s child—” his hands tighten on the armrests of his seat.  He knows it’s a lie, he knows that she is his, but every time he hears _Skywalker’s child_ , his blood pressure shoots up.  “It might be worth doing something to raise morale.”

“What are you suggesting?” Kylo asks, more because he’s trying to ignore the way that Hux is smirking, clearly thinking that it is Kylo who has brought the low morale and nothing else.

Mitaka, however, doesn’t seem to have a suggestion at all, and he glances around the table. 

It is Hux who steps in.  “The thing that will boost morale is our victory,” he says easily.  “And the fastest way to stamp out this spark of resistance will be to hunt the girl down and kill her and her spawn.”

His heart stops in his chest. 

He has imagined Rey and the child dead or wounded for months now, every time he sees signs that she has been out on the front lines.  But that had never been tied to Hux’s preening, self-important smirk as he suggests it.  “I am sure putting a bounty on her head would work, but it might also be worthy to turn it into a contest—to see which of our finest soldiers can bring down the Last Jedi.”

“No,” Ben croaks, then clears his throat.  “No, that will be a waste of our resources.  I shall find the girl myself.”

“Yourself?  Supreme Leader, surely you have more important things to do than to hunt down a girl who has already defeated you in battle twice.”

“Defeated me, yes, but is now incapacitated,” Kylo points out coolly.  _If Hux sets the dogs on her…_ She had already said that the First Order was her greatest fear for their child.  He could not allow her to be proven right, not while he was still trying to convince her—stubborn scavenger that she was—that she and their child had a place at his side.  “And besides—she is strong in the ways of the Force, and always has been.”  Hux narrows his eyes, remembering his own weaknesses, his own failures as he’d confessed them to Snoke.  “She’d make fast work of any of your men—even the best of them.”  That is true.  Rey has always been creative, resourceful, swift.  Pride blooms in him as he imagines her taking down Hux’s best fighters.  Were he not worried about their daughter, he’d almost tell Hux to proceed, just to watch him fail.  Maybe then he’d stop looking at Kylo as though he were a weak little boy.  “No, I will lead the search.”

“As you wish, Supreme Leader,” Hux says through gritted teeth.

“I imagine our Supreme Leader catching and killing the traitor would boost morale,” Mitaka suggests and it’s all Kylo can do not to Force choke for that hopeful look in his eyes.

* * *

His meditation has helped.  It’s been years since he’s meditated regularly—it reminds him too much of his uncle, and besides, so long as he is in touch with his anger, he doesn’t need that to hone his focus—but when it comes to connecting to Rey, he finds that he can sink into her existence much more closely to ‘at will’ than ever before.  It also means that when their daughter is feeling particularly feisty, he can suppress her kicks in Rey’s womb that the Force, annoyingly, transmits to his own gut.

He tells Rey this one night as they lie in their respective beds together.  They’ve taken to doing this—something that he almost could not believe when it had begun.  After the first time he’d touched her stomach, felt the fluttering as Rey called it, they’d come to the unspoken agreement that right before bed was the best time to check in, if a check in was to occur.  To his surprise, she grimaces.

“I was worried you’d say that,” she tells him.

“Why?” he asks.

“I’m not very good at meditating,” she mutters.  He raises his eyebrows in surprise, and Rey adds, defensively, “She kicks a fair amount now and it’s distracting.  And I never learned before I went to Ahch-To, so it’s still new to me.”

“You have such fine control,” Kylo tells her, almost incredulous.  “I’d think otherwise.”

“Yes, yes, you’d think,” she interrupts.  “Well, the fact remains I’m not as good at it as I’d like.  And I have a lot to teach myself, but that one isn’t going to happen until after she’s born.”

“I could try to direct you,” he suggests. _You need a teacher.  I can show you the ways of the Force._ “You do still need a teacher.”

She gives him a look.  “I have plenty that I can learn on my own—or from your mother.”

Kylo stiffens.  “From—”

“Your mother, yes,” Rey says.  “She’s strong with the Force.  She learned from Luke.  She’s been teaching me some of what she learned from him and I have other resources as well.”

“Like what?”

She does not answer.

“Rey?”

“I’m still working on decoding them.  I don’t know the language they’re in.”

“The language what’s in?”

“I may have scavenged some texts from Ahch-To,” she mutters.

“Some texts?” he asks, incredulously.  “What sorts of texts?”

“Ancient ones.”

“Ancient ones?  How ancient?”

“I don’t know.  As old as the Order, I suppose.”

“So you just thought you’d teach yourself how to be a Jedi?”

“Well who else is going to do it?”

“I can,” he growls.

“You’re not a Jedi,” she points out. 

Somehow he is not surprised that Rey would think she could teach herself how to be a Jedi from some ancient texts she can’t read.  She’d taught herself to fly, to read, to fight—why not this too? 

She blows him away sometimes.

Suddenly a wave of sadness rolls over him and he looks away from her.

This—all this, these moments of stolen connection where they lie in their beds and pretend? Pretend what?  That they are some normal couple expecting their first child?  That they love each other?  It’s all a lie.

She hadn’t joined him.  Perhaps he was deluding himself into thinking that she ever might, but when they lay here together, side by side, she was there in his bed next to him, telling him of her plans to teach herself the ways of the Force in the same breath as confessing that she found it difficult to meditate while his daughter kicked life within her.  He could lean over and brush strands of her brown hair out of her face, could kiss her, could hold her, could be hers and she could be his _._

Except it would never be.

Hux wants her and the child dead.

And Kylo won’t ever harm them, but this can’t end well.  Even if he stalls until after their daughter is born, she’ll be raised with a target on her back, marked by the power of her blood, everyone either trying to kill her or…

A chill crosses him and he closes his eyes.  He hasn’t thought about his nightmares in years, about the pulsing dark that fed his own, about the soft, gentle whispers from someone he had not yet met telling him that he was right to be angry, telling him that his pain would make him strong.

Next to him, Rey begins to snore.  He looks at her again.

 _Everything is better when you’re with me,_ he thinks sadly.  _Why didn’t you stay?_

And he can hear her response, even as she sleeps.  _Why didn’t you come with_ me?

Stubborn.  She is the most infuriatingly stubborn person he knows.  If she’d just kept out of sight, maybe they wouldn’t know she is pregnant and they wouldn’t be calling for her blood.  Maybe if she weren’t so infuriatingly stubborn.

His breath catches for a moment.

_She yielded, though.  When she started talking to me again._

Or maybe she was holding onto some hope that he’d be the Ben she thought he should be. 

Stubborn faith in him.  _You underestimate Ben Solo._

He knew why he held onto her, the dreams of the future they might share, the desire he felt to touch her hand again, to feel the skin of her stomach, to kiss her as he had before they’d sunk to the floor and created their daughter together.

Rey burrows her face into his chest and tentatively he wraps his arms around her.  He could die like this and die happy.

Why was it that he could never have nice things?


	5. Rey (6 Months)

Rey manages to get hurt during one incursion and that’s when Leia puts her foot down. “There are other ways you can be helpful and still fight without putting yourself on the front lines like this.”

“Fine,” Rey snaps. “I’ll fly, then.”

Leia grimaces. That’s not what she was hoping for, clearly. “I meant,” she says slowly, “you should stay in the command center with me.”

“I’m a better pilot than tactician,” Rey responds, jutting her jaw out. “I’ll fly the Falcon, and be with Chewie. There’s not a scrape we haven’t been in that we can’t get out of. And besides, we’re going to have to take this fight to the stars at some point. You keep saying we need to break their fleet.”

Leia glances at Chewie, and the two of them share a look that Rey doesn’t fully understand—even if she can get at parts of it. “If it were anyone but you, I’d say no,” Leia tells Chewie. “But I know you’ll keep them safe.”

Chewie rumbles his ascent and pats Leia on the head.

Rey will never tell Leia, but the first battle she flies into sitting in the cockpit of the Falcon is a relief. If initially she’d felt no difference in stamina or movement with her daughter’s Force flowing into her own, that is no longer the case now that she’s six months along. She’s not wildly uncomfortable, but she has to adjust her movements and sometimes her muscle memory is off, and sometimes she just gets tired faster. So sitting and flying, or climbing into one of the gunrooms to blast TIE fighters out of the sky—at least she’s sitting.

It’s not like on Crait now, with all of the fighters off in pursuit of the Falcon, but that, she is sure, is because Kylo is not directly commanding any of the battles she’s in now. It takes the pressure off the flight, in truth. Chewie is an old pro at being able to run rings around airborne Stormtroopers, especially when there aren’t thirty TIE fighters on his tail.

* * *

“Do you think we can really do it?” Rey asks Finn one afternoon. It is a quiet afternoon—a rare one these days, and they are sitting on a dock by a lake, their feet dangling lazily in the water. The sun is gentle on her skin, so she feels warm but not hot. She’s never really had relaxing afternoons in her life. She’s never had anyone to share them with either.

Finn squeezes her hand and she feels calluses. She’d never thought he’d have calluses from fighting with a blaster, since the weapon moves less than her saberstaff, but there they are.

“I have to believe it,” he says. “I don’t want to live in a galaxy where she grows up afraid.” He nods to her belly.

Rey’s throat tightens. “I know,” she responds quietly.

“We win by saving what we love,” he tells her. “That’s what Rose keeps saying, and she’s right. I’d be dead if it weren’t the truth.”

 _And Ben…_ her thoughts return once again to the _Supremacy_ , to leaping into that escape pod on the thin hope that she could save him from Snoke, from his own pain.

 _He won’t let me save him_ , she thinks sadly. Leia’s words from so many months before creep into her mind again. _I worry that unless the change comes from within him, it wouldn’t last._

She sighs and rests her head on Finn’s shoulder. “Is that what you’ve been telling the Stormtroopers? To save what they love?”

Finn shakes his head. “Too many of them have been torn away from what they love for exactly that purpose. They don’t know what they love. No—it’s freedom and respect. But that’s why Rose has been helping Leia. It’s why the Queen of Naboo has been helping us with rebuilding our alliances. It’s why we’re still here.” He looks around at the beautiful stone architecture of the house behind them. “Padme Amidala fought to save what she loved.”

Rey looks out over the shimmering water. She wonders what it would be like to have been born here, to hold power here, to be so loved that years and years after you died your name still holds a place in so many peoples’ hearts. _More than just a legend,_ she thinks, her mind flooding briefly with the image of Luke's face. _Someone real, someone tangible._

With a jolt, she realizes that in all likelihood her daughter will be born here too, on the planet that her great-grandmother had once ruled, had once defended.

It feels right, somehow.

“When do you head out again?” Rey asks.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “We’re going with the Blue Squadron.”

It will be the first time that Rey won’t be flying out at his side.

“Save what we love,” she tells him, and Finn smiles at her and kisses her temple.

* * *

Rey starts having nightmares.

Not every night, but enough to make her wake in a cold sweat, her daughter kicking her bladder. She runs her hand over her stomach and closes her eyes, reaching out to feel her daughter. Leia had told her that she’d had nightmares when she’d been pregnant with Ben, that she’d thought that they were coming from the dark presence that preyed upon him in her womb. But when she reaches out to her daughter, her light is so bright that Rey is sure that the nightmares come from elsewhere and it is her daughter who wrests her from them.

The thought brings tears to her eyes. “I love you,” she whispers to her stomach. “I love you so much, and I can’t wait to hold you.” She wraps all her love into the Force and sends it, pulsing and warm into her womb.

Sometimes the nightmares are of Snoke, memories mixed with fears. He is hunting for Kylo Ren’s child, determined to turn her into a dark power the likes of which the galaxy has never seen. Rey takes her daughter’s hand and runs from him, but knows it’s no use. There is no outrunning Snoke. “Mommy!” the girl screams at her. Her face is a blur, but she has Ben’s frightened eyes. When Rey’s eyes snap open, she’s shaking and shivering. She tries to take deep breaths, to meditate, to reach out to Ben in case he has been having nightmares that somehow came to her mind. But she hasn’t got as firm a grasp on controlling whatever it is that connects them, though she keeps trying.

He has been trying to teach her. But she hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that whenever her daughter kicks it breaks her concentration. Perhaps that is why she is having nightmares—she is losing control of her thoughts as her daughter grows bigger while her feet and back grow tired so very quickly.

But she lies on her back and takes deep breaths, willing her mind to go black, listening to her pulse and feeling the flow of the Force that passes between herself and her daughter.

A moment later, she hears him breathing and opens her eyes.

She has never seen him sleep before. He looks young. Peaceful, even. She finds she can’t look away.

There’s always been something about him to captivate her attention. When first she’d met him, it had been her own fear, but especially when she’d seen his fear, she’d realized how misplaced that was. He was far more afraid of her than she was of him. She wonders if he understands that, if he sees that as clearly as she does.

But there’s no fear in his face now—none of the stress she’s seen in his jaw when they speak. And it’s only when she really sees just how much younger he looks that the thought crosses her mind. _He can’t be happy._

She knows he hadn’t been happy in his defeat on Crait. But that is different from what she sees now whenever she sees him: his stress, his frustration. If the only times he seems at peace are when he sleeps and when he has been sitting with her for a few minutes…

_Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to._

“Kylo Ren is the past you should let die,” she whispers to him and she leans down and rests her head against his chest. “Kylo Ren makes you miserable, Ben. He is a bad future for you.”

Ben does not stir. She wishes he would. She wishes he would open his eyes and say that she’s wrong so that she can tell him that he’s wrong—again, and defy him as intensely as she did in that chair while he’d invaded her mind, forcing him to retreat until it is she who is on the attack and he who does not know what to do with her force of will.

She looks up at him and wonders what it will be like when their daughter is born. Will they still share these evenings?

With a lurch, she realizes that her daughter may not share their visions. He may be systems away and never see her, even if Rey is holding her when they are speaking. _He won’t like that._

_He won’t like being alone._

As if he’d heard her thought, the arm he’d swung over his head shifts, comes to wrap around her, and Rey forgets completely the nightmare that had woken her because an unexpected peace rolls over her when Kylo’s arm is around her and her head is on his chest, just over his heart.

* * *

 

When she wakes, her head is still on his chest and it takes her a moment to realize that his hand is in her hair. His eyes are open and there’s such a strange look in them that Rey’s mouth goes dry and she swallows.

Almost immediately he fades away and Rey is alone in her room, her baby pressing down on her bladder. She gets up, relieves herself and stares at herself long and hard in the mirror.

“You need to stop this,” she tells her reflection.

 _Stop what?_ a voice that, once again, sounds frustratingly like him, when he’d smirked at her and asked, _Did he tell you what happened?_

“Stop that,” she mutters at her own head.

She can imagine him smirking at her, his eyes blazing. _Go on. Say it._

She glares at her reflection in the mirror and goes to get dressed and find Leia or Poe, knowing that neither of them will willingly give her a mission to fly, but she is quite sure that she can make them.


	6. Kylo (7 Months)

He has almost made it out of the room when—“Supreme Leader.”  He closes his eyes and stops.  He won’t look at Hux because he doesn’t like looking at his face.

“What?”  He is glad at how curt he sounds, but he can feel the baby putting pressure on Rey’s bladder, and while he knows that that doesn’t mean he has to pee, it means that he absolutely feels like he does.  He takes deep breaths.  When he breathes carefully he can control what he feels.  But of course, when Hux accosts him, his control is nowhere near as close to good enough for that. 

“How goes the search for the Jedi?” 

“It’s progressing.”

“Is it?  I have seen no sign of it having done so.”

“Perhaps because it is progressing in ways that might escape your fine notice.”  He can’t help it.  He turns to face Hux. 

He immediately regrets the decision.  Hux’s eyes are blazing angrily at him, and he has that sneer on his face that tells him that he thinks that Kylo’s incompetence has reached new levels.  Not for the first time, Kylo wishes he could fire the commander of his armies.  But he knows that if he does, then everything would really fall apart.

 _Would that be so bad?_ a voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Rey asks.  Once again, the vision of waking to find her head on his chest haunts him. He hadn't been able to get it out of his head no matter how he tried.  What control he could manage for the physical transmissions of their Force bond did not seem to stretch to memories of her asleep with her head just over his heart.

“Then when can we expect the news that she and her spawn are dead?”

“In time, Hux.  It’s a careful—”

“I don’t think you’re even trying.  Do you have any idea of how dangerous Skywalker’s spawn could be?  It is the one thing that could fan the flames of the Resistance even further across the galaxy.  Or are you a traitor to the cause?  Do you want to keep your little cousin alive?”

Kylo’s hand twitches and Hux starts gasping, his hands flying to his throat.

“What did you just say?” Kylo asks, fury rolling off him, though—conveniently in this case—not for the reasons that Hux thinks.  _Your little cousin._ No—no she is his daughter, he’s felt her fluttering and kicking with his own hands, with his own gut. He has felt the light within her balancing the dark. 

“Forgive me, Supreme Leader,” Hux chokes out.  His face is purple.  He could just keep going.  He could choke the man and then he’d be gone, dead, and Kylo could promote someone who wasn’t a complete swine to take over this military operations. 

Kylo relents, despite his better judgment and every fiber of his being telling him he should just end Hux. 

“I’m handling it,” Kylo spits at him.  “It is not your position to question my methods.  You wouldn’t understand them even if I tried to explain them to you.”

“Of course, sir,” Hux gasps in reply.  “I should tell you, though, I took the liberty of expressing that there is a bounty on her head as well as the heads of the rest of the Resistance leaders.  It felt out of place that she wasn’t already on that list.”

“You undermine me?” Kylo asks quietly, his voice shaking, his whole body shaking. 

“I want the thing done, as I imagine you would as well.”

“Get out,” Kylo tells him, feeling more pressure on his bladder, his heart thudding in his ears.  _She’s yours.  She’s yours.  She’s yours._

Hux, face still red from his choking, flees and Kylo stands there trembling.

* * *

 

When he focuses on his breathing that night to check in on Rey she is not lying in the bed the way she usually is, she is standing, staring out of his window, her arms crossed over her chest.  Her breasts are much larger now than they were when first he’d met her, swelling to prepare to feed their girl, and her belly protrudes out in a bump that seems to get bigger every time he sees her.

She does not look at him, though he knows she knows he’s there, and he climbs out of bed and crosses to stand next to her, looking out into the blackness of space.  “What do you see?” he asks her, resting a hand on her lower back.  He knows she gets tired there.  He feels it sometimes during the day.  Her skin is so warm through the fabric of her tunic.

She rounds on him.

“You put a bounty on my head?”

“That was Hux!” he protests instantly, but she shoves his chest.

“And you told me you’d keep her safe?  That I didn’t have anything to fear from—”

“You don’t,” he snaps angrily. 

“You think that a bounty hunter isn’t going to come after me?  That they’ll take one look at a pregnant woman and think ‘oh, that’s not an easy target.’”

“You’re not an easy target,” he says, affronted that she’d sell herself so short.  “I’d be shocked if any bounty hunter in the galaxy could take you on.”

Her eyes are shining with angry tears and there is such a fire there when she looks at him, her face twisted in fury.  “You promised,” she snaps.  “You promised.  I thought I could maybe trust you—I thought that whatever this is—” she waves her hand.

His stomach bottoms out.  “Whatever what is?”

“Whatever we pretend is the truth these nights when—” there are tears falling from her eyes in earnest now.  _Don’t do this,_ he remembers her pleading, her lips still swollen and chapped from his kisses.  He has not kissed her since the _Supremacy_.

“Pretend?” he breathes.  They are standing so close.  He could easily cross the distance, could easily pull her lips to his. 

“Pretend that we’re—that all this is manageable.  That you and I aren’t on opposite sides of a war because we both want what’s best for her.  The war will always come first, won’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to.”  His heart is beating so hard, his throat is dry.  “Rey—you know it doesn’t have to.”

“So do you,” she retorts.  “Why must it be I who bends?  Because I am younger?  Because I am the woman?”

“You know that’s not what I—”

“You put a bounty on my head, Kylo.  On our unborn daughter’s head.  You bent the wrong way.”

“Rey—”

“All this,” she says waving her hand.  “All this is just us lying to ourselves and I should know.  I’m good at lying to myself, aren’t I?”

“Don’t say it,” he begs her.  “Don’t—Rey—”

“I can’t go on like this.  It’s dangerous.  If your organization is the greatest threat to my daughter’s life, I don’t want you near her.  I don’t want you near me.”

The world is falling away from under him and he loses control and Rey melts into the stars and he’s left gasping, choking air into his lungs and staring at the bleak emptiness of the galaxy he supposedly rules.


	7. Rey (8 Months)

She hasn’t seen him or spoken to him since she told him to leave.

She should feel relieved but her traitor heart thinks about him too much—more even than it did after the _Supremacy_ , before she’d known she was pregnant.

She’s very pregnant now, her stomach too large and unwieldy for her to sit comfortably. She moves slowly—waddles, practically—and needs to pee just about every four minutes. Chewie is very attentive when he helps her board the Falcon, and he shoos the Porgs off her chair when she enters the cockpit to sit at his side. The Porgs have multiplied exponentially since they had left Ahch-To and the one that likes Chewie best frequently nudges at her belly curiously. Sometimes her daughter kicks back, and the Porg chirrups concernedly, looking between Rey and the sentient lump that is her belly. Rey rests a hand on the Porg and wishes things could be as simple as the way the little creature sees the world.

She doesn’t go to the gunrooms now—climbing up and down the ladder is wildly uncomfortable and Chewie is afraid she’ll fall and won’t let her near them. She does repairs when they are easy and she can either sit flat on the floor or stand, but for the most part, she helps him fly, staring out at the stars.

Flying alongside Poe and his fleet, they successfully take down two Star Destroyers over the course of two intense battles, and news of it ripples across the galaxy. The HoloNet is abuzz with it—that the First Order which had seemed so poised for victory is now losing—and routinely—to the Resistance. She and Finn and Poe and Rose check into the updates with glee.

“It’s not over just yet,” Poe warns them whenever they get too excited.

“It’s progress,” Rose says and her eyes are shining. “Every time we win, that’s more hope spread across the galaxy. And more hope means more support.”

“Support isn’t resources,” he says. “We need more than just—”

“So I suppose the fact that we now have three new bomber squads and the soldiers to fly them doesn’t mean anything? The fact that we have thirty new Y-Wings and fifty new hammerheads?” Leia is smiling sardonically at him. “Not to mention the thousands of recruits Finn’s been bringing over.”

“Trying not to count my chickens before they’re hatched, General,” Poe tells her, making her chuckle.

“We have them on the defensive. It’s only a matter of time,” she says. “Which makes it all the more dangerous, of course. There’s nothing like desperate flailing for damage if you’re not prepared for it.

* * *

Rey is relieved when Leia comes in to visit her in the evenings, unknowingly taking the time that Ben had used to occupy before Rey goes to sleep.

“Soon,” she’ll say, resting a hand on Rey’s belly, and Rey feels Leia checking on her girl. Leia smiles at Rey. “She’s going to be a character. I can tell.”

“She’s got stubborn parents. That was bound to happen,” Rey mutters.

“And stubborn grandparents. She comes by it naturally.” Leia looks proud. “The galaxy is a hard place. Stubbornness helps you get through it.”

“Hopefully it won’t be that bad for her,” Rey says and she watches Leia closely. Leia, who had been so very involved in the creation of the New Republic, who had tried so hard to build a lasting freedom that her son would be raised in and thrive in.

“We can hope,” Leia says. “We can always hope. And take that hope and make it reality by our own stubbornness.” She gives Rey a wry smile.

Then she takes a deep breath. “We’re going to be moving our base soon.”

Rey swallows. “We’re leaving Naboo?” She isn’t sure she wants that. It’s peaceful and quiet here, and she had liked the idea of her daughter being born in a place where her blood has some sort of meaning.

“No—we’re staying on Naboo, just going underground a bit more,” Leia said. “It’s getting a bit cramped here and in the environs, so we will be moving our base of operations to Otoh Gunga. The Gungans have kindly offered it to us since it’s more secretive than any of the Nabooan cities. But…you should stay here.” And Rey understands the deep breath that Leia had taken.

“No way,” Rey says, digging into that stubborn streak that she and Leia had just talked about.

“I’m not saying it to keep you away from the Resistance, or because of anything else,” Leia tells her. “It’s more comfortable here, and you’re getting closer and closer to birth. No one would blame you for wanting to remain in the fresh air, surrounded by greenery.”

Rey narrows her eyes at Leia, who doesn’t even bother looking sheepish at her blatant attempt to appeal to Rey’s love of plants.

“And would you have stayed out of the way when you were pregnant?” she demands of Leia.

“I’m not trying to keep you out of the way.”

“Oh?”

“I’m trying to keep you comfortable. Aren’t you tired? You deserve to rest.”

Rey swallows. She wants to keep busy. If she keeps busy, she doesn’t have to think about Kylo, about how she hasn’t seen or spoken to him, about how the First Order is sending bounty hunters for her and her baby.

“You aren’t worried about the bounty?” she asks Leia. “I’ll be more exposed up here, especially with the Resistance fighters off in Otoh Gunga.”

Leia laughs. “I’ve had a bounty on my head more during my life than not.  You can’t let it worry you. It’s a sign of their weakness, of your strength. Don’t pay any attention to it. Also, do you really think I’m going to leave you without a single guard to your name? That’s my grandbaby in there. You’ll be safe here.”

Safe, she thinks. Ben had promised to keep their child safe.

“I don’t want to be apart from my friends,” Rey says at last. “I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t want to feel as though I’m useless. As though I’m not doing anything.”

Leia gives her a long hard look. “You are doing a great deal already. More than anyone else in your position would. Taking some time to prepare yourself is not selfishness, and there will be plenty to do once you’ve given birth, and I won’t forget how you don’t like to feel useless—don’t you worry.”

Rey gives her a half-smile, and Leia reaches a hand up and cups Rey’s cheek and Rey is struck, once again, how this is the act of a mother. Her throat constricts.

“I sort of liked the idea of my mother’s great-grandchild being born here,” Leia says wistfully after a moment. “It made it feel as though….well, it felt as though there was some weight to her. I’ve spent so long dealing with Vader’s legacy that all the work my mother did falls to the side.” She gives Rey a sad smile. “But you—you will never be left behind. And I suppose that there’s something equally fitting about a desert child giving birth under water.”

Rey blinks. “Under water?”


	8. Kylo (9 Months)

Ben wakes in agony in the middle of the night, though his groin is constricting in on itself and crushing his organs. It’s a pain unlike anything he’s experienced—Snoke’s lightning, Chewbacca’s bowcaster blast, the slash across the face that Rey had given him.

His first thought is poison, because given how Hux has been speaking with him in the past few months, he’s honestly shocked that Hux hasn’t tried to kill him yet. _If this is death…_ he thinks clutching his abdomen and reaching for the Force. He wants to see her one last time, wants to feel his child’s kick, tell her that he is a fool, but a fool who loves her no matter what he’s done.

Rey’s face is bright red, and she is hunched over, her stomach, panting, and through his own pain, he realizes that it is her pain wracking his body, not his own.

It is their child being born.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he hears her say, but her gaze is not on him, but focused on someone he can’t see. She waits and listens to a response. “No—I’ll—I’ll be fine. I can do this on my own.”

“You won’t be alone,” he growls at her, and she looks at him and whatever rage she’d felt at him two months ago dies on her face as she leans her forehead forward into his chest.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says again, and this time he knows it’s to him.

“Rey—”

She leans back against the bed, her eyes closing, her face contorting and his muscles contract again and he feels like he’s going to be sick all over again. Is he weak? She seems not to be close to vomiting. Or maybe it’s different when there’s an actual baby inside her. Or maybe she’s been numbed to the pain. He distantly remembers learning that women’s bodies numb themselves somewhat during labor. If that’s the case, he feels a flutter of fear that his own body won’t be so kind to him.

If she’s in a Resistance medical bay, perhaps they’ve given her drugs to ease her pain as well. She has always acted instinctively with the Force—maybe she is controlling her pain. She’s always been better at numbing her own pain than him.

“Rey,” he breathes again. He doesn’t know what else to say. Everything in his mind is spinning and that pain in his abdomen is so distracting. He understands for the first time what she’d meant when she’d said their daughter’s kicks prevented her from meditating properly.

The pain takes over and he vomits again.

“Ben?” she says through gritted teeth, as though trying to keep someone in the room from hearing her.

“I’m fine,” he growls.

“You’re not,” she says. “You don’t have to do this. I can do this on my own.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” he responds.

“And you shouldn’t have suffer this,” she says and suddenly her voice is so painfully sad. “And I did say…I…”

It’s only the fact that he has just vomited twice that keeps him from kissing her right there. Damn everything—she is giving birth to the future and everything in his life is the past.

He feels frantic.

He feels alive.

“Please,” she says to him. “Please.”

He takes a deep breath.

 _Control,_ he thinks and she is gone and so is the pain. He gets to his feet and knows what he has to do.

He finds the mask his grandfather had worn for years. He had turned to the light because of his child—an act that had killed him. _You’re afraid you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader._

 _I can be stronger,_ he thinks calmly as he goes to wash his mouth out. _What sort of fool was I to think this wasn’t strength?_

“Supreme Leader,” comes a voice through his door. He waves it open with the Force, and the first thing that Hux’s eyes land on is the vomit by the bed. “Feeling unwell?”

“Better now,” Kylo shrugs. He clips his lightsaber to his hip and moves easily through the room. He hasn’t felt this calm in years—if ever. He has never felt such purpose. “Did you want something?”

Hux’s face splits into a livid expression. “The Resistance is here. With all their fleet and allies from across the galaxy.”

Kylo blinks at him. And he can’t help himself. “And you didn’t see that coming?”

Hux is apoplectic. It’s all that Ben can do not to laugh. “What do you mean and I didn’t see that coming?” Hux shrieks at him.

“You’re the commander of my armies. You’re supposed to guess at our enemies’ tactics, I should hope.”

“You are the Supreme Leader. You are supposed to—” but what he’s supposed to do as Supreme Leader he doesn’t care. This man has called his child Skywalker’s spawn for months, put a bounty on Rey’s head. Ben smiles as his hand twitches and Hux begins to choke. This time, he does not stop until the man’s heart has.

He strolls out of his chamber, closing the door behind him so no one will see Hux’s corpse lying on the floor inches away from the vomit, and makes his way relaxedly through the ship. He pauses on the bridge just long enough to fake a temper tantrum about how the Resistance has shown up without any warning and conveniently drive his lightsaber through the communication section, meaning that there will be no way for the _Finalizer_ to communicate with the rest of the fleet, much less the TIEs that they send out to try and fight off the Resistance.

He storms his way through the ship, and hops into his Silencer and takes off into space.

It’s not long before the Millenium Falcon is on his tail, because of course it would be. He remembers Chewie’s blast at his side, remembers the roar of rage from the Wookiee who’d used to carry him around the hold of his father’s ship. He turns on the frequency he remembers his father using and says into the void,

“Chewie.”

He hears the angry roar of _What do you want?_

“Take me captive,” he says. “Take me to her. Please.”

_So you can kill the kid like you killed your father?_

“That’s fair,” he says. “It’s more than fair. But I won’t. I promise I won’t, Chewie.”

_Your word means nothing to me._

“Then do it for my mother,” he tries. “Do it for Rey. Do it for the kid. Do it…” he swallows, unsure if this will bait the Wookiee more or if it will be just right. “Do it for my father.”

Chewie doesn’t respond immediately, and he hears a strange high pitched chirping noise, and a low Chewie grumble of _How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?_

Then. _Fine. But I’m blowing up your ship when it’s done._

Ben does his best not to fret about the Silencer. He likes the Silencer. But he supposes beggars can’t be choosers. _If anything’s going to sink morale down any lower…_

“Done,” he agrees and he lets the Falcon catch up to him. He puts on a mask, opens the hatch and floats up to the open portal of the Falcon where he sees Chewie standing there with handcuffs. When he’s safely inside, the Wookiee puts them on his wrists roughly. Ben doesn’t bother protesting that the cuffs won’t hold him, because he knows that Chewie won’t care. He doesn’t care either.

“Where do you want me?” he asks, his voice half catching in his throat. Chewie seems less tall now that Ben’s fully grown, and infinitely colder in comparison to that brother-in-arms of his wayward father who’d always let Ben ride around on his back.

_Wherever I don’t have to look at you._

Ben brings himself over to a bunk and sits down on it. It’s got a bunch of weird fluffy creatures nesting underneath it and they all look at him curiously. They make the high pitched chirping noise he’d heard through the comm and he blinks at them. They’re ridiculously cute, so he undoes the cuffs because he’ll be able to sense Chewie coming back to the bunks and put them back on. He reaches a hand down and strokes the little creature and it chirps contentedly. Then he notices that underneath it, it has little nestlings it’s keeping warm.

His mind flies to Rey and he takes a deep breath, preparing himself for pain, but pain’s worth it if Rey’s not alone.

It washes over him, that feeling that every muscle near his groin is burning. Rey appears on the bunk next to him, panting and crying, and he takes her hand and squeezes it. He channels the pain that he feels in his own abdomen down into her hand and she does the same when she looks at him.

“Ben, I told you to—” she begins before letting out a yell, veins in her neck popping out the way they had when she’d resisted him the first time.

“You told me the offer still stands,” he pants. “That it always will.”

She keeps yelling, but there’s a fire in her eyes as she does. He feels like he should be saying something encouraging, should be saying anything at all, and he focuses as best he can on keeping his own pain to a minimum, a smile crossing his face as he remembers Snoke telling him that pain makes him stronger, that he should magnify it. But if he is able to control Rey’s pain inside him, he can be strong for her, for their child.

“Please,” she pants. “Please.”

He bends down and presses a kiss to her forehead, his lips lingering against her sweaty skin. The taste of her sweat sends a flash of the memory of the _Supremacy_ through his mind, of feeling as though everything had come to make sense because she was there with him, loving him. How had he been so afraid of that?

“I’m coming,” he whispers as he shifts so that she is leaning against his chest, his lips pressed against her ear, her hand still in his. “I’m coming, I promise I am. But I’m here now, and I won’t leave you.” He kisses her temple. She lets out a sob that turns into a yell, and her grip on his hand is so tight it could break his fingers, but it feels like the first time she’d touched him, the only future he has ever felt as though he could share with someone as an equal.


	9. Rey (Epilogue)

She can’t look away from her.

She is the most beautiful thing that Rey has ever seen. Her body is exhausted—a different exhaustion than any Rey has ever known. There’s an odd emptiness inside her, but at the same time, her heart is so full as she stares into her own eyes set at the center of Ben’s long face. How clearly she can see him already in the shape of her daughter’s bones. She presses her lips to the soft skin of her forehead.

The door opens and she looks up to see Leia standing there, her hand in Ben’s as she leads him into the room. Rey’s breath catches at the sight of him. He looks so young standing there, wearing a plain grey shirt, his eyes burning at her as he lets go of his mother’s hand and crosses the room in three strides. He kisses her, and Rey feels her eyes begin to leak tears because this is real, it’s real that he’s here and she can taste in him the future she’d thought was gone forever. When he breaks the kiss he tilts his head and looks down at her and he sinks into a chair, his eyes locked on their daughter.

With a trembling hand, he reaches up and runs a finger along her cheek, and when he looks back at Rey there are tears in his eyes.

“I…” Rey says before pausing and swallowing. “I wanted to name her Hope.”

Leia had told her she’d named Ben for her only hope in her most desperate hour. Rey had lived on hope for years that she’d have parents that would love her and care for her—hope that her daughter would never have to worry about because she would only ever know love. And she has such hope in the future now that Ben is there with her.

Ben nods his head—a jerky nod, his breathing still heavy. He leans his head forward and rests it against Rey’s shoulder. She tilts her head sideways and her cheek leans against his hair. She stares at Hope, her heart so full of love that she is close to tears, and knows that it’s the same for Ben too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed! You can find me [here](http://crossingwinter.tumblr.com/reylo) on tumblr.


End file.
